For most of my life I’ve been an “early adopter” and have few misgivings about it. Especially tech. I’ve been able to recognize when technology makes our lives easier, but there are three things I resisted and two of them are tech-related.
The non-tech related thing that I was late to the party for is my favourite television series of all time – Battlestar Galactica. I was so turned off by the junky first version that came out for one season in the late seventies that I ignored my friends and other sci fi fans when they would rave about the reboot that came out a few years later. The darned series was over before I found out just how good the reboot was. I’ve rewatched the entire series several times since.
Cellphones (and before them, pagers) It’s all because I once worked for a mean company that demanded people be on call on weekends and evenings but wouldn’t compensate them. Then they fired someone who had a few drinks at a Christmas party while on call but not being paid, and I swore that I would never fall into that trap. So no cellphone or pager for me! I’m still catching up to the rest of the world.
Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Like cellphones, I’ve resisted getting one in my home, not because of fears of what they’ll hear Karen and I talking about, but because of the principle of the privacy thing. Since then I’ve realized that there is no getting away from it. If I use the web to look at items at Walmart, Canadian Tire or on Amazon, I know I’m going to be deluged with ads for those things for the next week so if those nosey little gizmo’s hear me talking about them over surfing the web looking at them, what’s the difference?
Do you hear me Santa?
